Bottoms up on the three-drug cocktail

THE Supreme Court has just ruled that Kentucky's lethal injections are constitutional. Kentucky, like most of the states, uses a three-drug cocktail to execute someone: an anaesthetic, a paralytic, and then a heart-stopper. The argument against the cocktail is that in some cases the executioners bungle the anaesthetic, making the administration of the other two chemicals extremely painful. The petitioners in the Kentucky case, death row inmates, were asking that the state simply use a mega-dose of barbituates, as one might use to euthanise an animal. There have been a number of botched lethal injections, but the Court was unfazed by them.

Legalities aside, wouldn't it be simpler just to switch to the barbituates? Slate offers a few explanations of why states use the cocktail. The best argument in favour of three drugs is speed. And that's not an insignificant point; loitering in the death chamber would be hard on the families (of the victim and of the offender).

The decision ends a de facto moratorium that has been in place across the land since September, when the Court heard oral arguments on the case (though Texas, naturally, managed to get one more guy executed just after the bell). And only two justices dissented—David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A number of individual states have been pushing against the death penalty in the past few years—New Jersey outlawed it, and Nebraska lost it when the electric chair was deemed unconstitutional—but it's going to be hard for the country to outlaw the death penalty when the Supreme Court has so few objecters.

Why are doctors screwing this up? How difficult is this? Maybe they should have a nurse do it...or someone that has experience injecting things. And do they still swab the site with alcohol before inserting the needle?